Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church

by Peter Lake

This book is an examination of the puritanism of a series of divines, including Dering, Cartwright, Whitaker and Chaderton, all of whom passed through the University of Cambridge between 1560 and 1600. Dr Lake gives a detailed analysis of their careers and opinions. The personal and ideological links between them are established and in the process some idea of the range of opinions current among puritan divines in this period is built up. The aim of the work is to arrive, through this process of comparison and juxtaposition, at the kernel of shared attitudes and beliefs that justify the inclusion of all these men within a coherent puritan tradition.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

368 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 1982

Reviews

[W. Littlejohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a solid study, definitely a high-end 3-star. However, it doesn't make the most compelling reading, and leaves a lot to be desired organizationally, being more a sequence of short studies on key figures or controversies in moderate Elizabethan Puritanism than a sustained account. The most interesting part for me (although entirely irrelevant to my research purposes) was his discussions of the predestination doctrines and disputes of these Puritan divines. When you realize just how far some of these guys had gone, and how intolerant they were about it, you become far more sympathetic to the emergence of Arminianism over the next couple decades.